1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an identification label for a cylindrical vessel, as well as to a cylindrical vessel that is provided with an identification label. In particular, the invention relates to an identification label for thin injection syringes, and to injection syringes that are identified with such a label.
2. The Prior Art
In the pharmaceutical and medical field, it is very important to be able to easily identify individual products, such as medications, blood samples or similar, for example. Since these products as a rule concern a very specific person and mix-ups are associated with great risks, it must be ensured from the beginning that each product is clearly identified at every moment. Potential mix-ups and sometimes life-threatening risks must be avoided, even in stressful situations.
For the safety of the identified pharmaceutical and medical products, it is also very important that the identification be securely joined with the product during the entire lifetime and, for example, that a glued-on label not be easily detached.
Moreover, the identification should always be very legible. The identification should not be adversely affected by any kind of environmental or similar influences such that the inscription would become illegible or that mix-ups could occur.
Furthermore, modern identification should also permit rapid and efficient processing. This means that the identification can be generated by machine. Different methods of automated printing are suitable for this purpose. Already during manufacture, for example, a corresponding label may even be printed simultaneously with an identification. However, even a completely individual separate inscription, mad for example by ink-jet or thermal-transfer printing, is possible. In particular, during subsequent inscription with an ink-jet printer, the inscription may be damaged very easily by environmental influences, such as humidity. Therefore, suitable protection is necessary in these cases.
Modern production and processing techniques very often also require automated recognition of already identified products. Besides the optical character recognition (OCR), reading devices for bar codes or data matrix codes are also used very frequently for this purpose. For these optical recognition methods, however, it is necessary for the identification area of a product to be passed as flatly as possible in front of the recognition device. Especially for cylindrical vessels with a narrow radius, such as thin injection syringes, for example, optical recognition cannot be assured as a rule. The identification in these cases is usually extended over more than half the circumference, so that automated recognition is not possible at all or only with considerable complexity.